In this fascinating, surprisingly entertaining tour of the human body, F. González-Crussi reveals not only how our bodies breathe air, pump blood, give birth, digest food, and discard waste, he also speaks to the sometimes bizarre, often hilarious history of how mankind unlocks these anatomical secrets. The evolution of our knowledge of the body is inseparable from popular myths, personal biases, and a long history of rash conclusions. As the doctor shows, for every heroic researcher aiding our understanding (such as Lazzaro Spallanzani, who harvested his own gastric juices to prove their role in digestion), there was a misguided soul setting it back—like William Lane, who called the large intestine a "cesspool" and removed it from scores of patients, regardless of their symptoms. A professor emeritus of pathology at Northwestern University and the former head of pathology at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago, González-Crussi is renowned for his medical essays, blending science, the history of medicine, and philosophy to conduct entertaining and unexpected literary journeys.

"A sharp departure from medicine as a cold world of clinical facts and figures. Rather, [the author] asks us to return to a view of the body not as a machine but as a wondrous work of creation, where both the corporeal and the spiritual coexist."—NYReview of Books